Quote:
Originally Posted by dragon
I worked for a CO that said repeatedly that "Hope is not a plan". During 2008 we saw the Company buy out a lot of folks who worked behind the scenes and replace them with "technology". Well as many have pointed out, we're using yesterday's technology tomorrow.
We are thin staffed at any number of points. They put off hiring pilots too late last year and now they are paying a bunch of us to sit at home awaiting training, because they didn't want to bring new hires in at their inflated salaries to over staff some categories so that we could adequately staff other categories.
We have been running lean. Like a long distance runner, that's ok. The problem is when the marathoner is asked to sprint and there aren't any stores of fat to draw upon. Ok, maybe not the best analogy but I hope you get my point. The MBA types don't study history, so they are doomed to repeat it. Corporate America did this in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, they then bemoaned the lack of good workers.
In order to provide good customer experience we need to staff above the bare minimum at all levels and that includes people behind the scenes that customers don't see. Crew tracking and accommodations work ok during normal ops, but they're stretched. So throw in a major IROP and it falls apart. The mahogany row was hoping that one major IROP was all we had to deal with this winter, too late they learned "Hope is not a plan".
We could overstaff all the crew tracking, scheduling, ramp, agents, etc. in Atlanta to cover stuff during an IROP and it wouldn't matter one bit because nobody will come to work when it snows. So then you have the overhead of staffing for an IROP and nobody will show up during an IROP.
I think the answer to our Crew Tracking and Scheduling issues lie in the use of better technology and possibly the ability to run that technology from home. Then when we have an IROP they can pay normal schedulers overtime to modify rotations and send out notifications from home. With today's technology and video conferencing abilities I don't see why they all need to be sitting next to each other in the OCC.
The answer in getting the rampers, agents, etc to get to work during a snowstorm lies in the city of Atlanta having more than 5 snowplows for when it snows and some trucks that can apply an anti-icing brine solution when they expect ice.
11-01-2014
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